The Karen language have more than 4 millions speakers worldwide and we use Myanmar script for our writing system but our alphabet are not the same as Burmese. The ISO 639-3 Code is ksw
Welcome, @kawkhu! This is a good question. Thanks for asking it.
I thought there used to be one available, but now I don’t see one. I am not sure what happened to it. Perhaps it was not compatible with the newer versions of Keyman, since it was made so long ago. Hopefully someone can bring it up to date for you.
There is also a Windows keyboard that hopefully will be available on ScriptSource soon. It was made a few years ago but never uploaded to the site. I am not sure if a Window keyboard will be helpful to you or not, but maybe it will be for some people.
Thanks for replying! The Karen keyboard on Window do not have the correct Karen keyboard layout. They add Burmese keyboard layout under the Karen keyboard so we can’t use the keyboard to type in Karen.
Welcome to the Keyman community, @kawkhu.
Keyman has a tool called Keyman Developer which can be used to create a keyboard of one’s choice. We also provide a platform where anyone can request to have their keyboard included in our online keyboard library. With Keyman Developer, the keyboard can be made to be compatible with any popular platforms (i.e. Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and more).
With that said, I can help with the keyboard creation processes. We can adapt from the existing keyboard and tailor-made a new one which best fit the language and needs of the language users. What do you think?
That would be awesome if you could create one. I’m not sure if there’s any existing Keyboard layout for the Karen language. The Karen keyboard I found in this website: (https://thanlwinsoft.github.io/www.thanlwinsoft.org/ThanLwinSoft/MyanmarUnicode/InputMethods/SgawKaren.html ) have more letters than the Karen alphabet. It looks like Karen and Burmese in one keyboard.
I can help with the keyboard development processes, but I do not know the language enough to make decision on which key to put what character. Probably you or someone who know S’gaw Karen language enough can help with that.
I can show you the Karen keyboard layout from this iOS Karen keyboard app.
You can use that to create the keyboard.
The list of the Karen letters:
ဆ တ န မ အ ပ က င သ စ
ၢ ှ ိ ု ဲ ့ ၣ် ြ ၤ း
ဖ ထ ခ လ ဘ ည ဟ ်
Shift
ၡ ဝ န မ အ ပ က င သ စ
ွ ျ ီ ူ ါ ံ ာ် ္ ၢ် ၠ
ဇ ယ ဃ ရ ဒ ဓ ဂ ဧ
Numbers:
၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉ ၀
I hope this help.
This have complete list of the Karen letters and characters. ဇ and ဓ are not included in there because they are not part of the Karen alphabet but sometimes it’s used for loanwords.
Thank you for the references. These are helpful.
There is an existing development of the keyboard. I will look into it. Do you need the mobile version of the keyboard as well?
The Sgaw Karen keyboard is now in the development processes:
https://github.com/keymanapp/keyboards/pull/1317.
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@kawkhu
Do you want this character for stacking consonants? ္
It seems it is not part of the Sgaw Karen writing system? Do you want it for loanwords?
Yes that would be great.
The keyboard has been updated per your suggestions and comments.
Here is the change log:
- Touch layout has be fully updated and inclusive of all characters in the Desktop layout
- Added ဓ to touch layout
- Added ္ to both desktop and touch layouts
- These three ဒီး လီၤ and ှ့ have been added to the longpress of ဒ လ and ှ respectively
- The empty keys on the first and second rows of shift layer has been filled with the missing characters: ေ ာ ဗ and ဉ.
Here is the keyboard package for testing. Please check all keys and sequences that may be of your concern. Also read and check the info given on the welcome (popped up before installation on touch devices and after installation on windows). The package can be installed on any operating systems.
sgaw_karen_UpdateTouchDesktopAndMetadata.kmp (777.2 KB)
As I was using the keyboard, i find it a little bit frustrating and time consuming to keep going shift to unshift then back to shift to type out a syllable. I was wondering if you could create a keyboard layout that have all the Karen letters on unshift like in the English Keyboard and have all the non-Karen alphabets and other rarely use letters on shift but then i realized there are way more letters in Karen than English. But I like the keyboard over all. Thank You!
@kawkhu
Yes, we are trying to put the more commonly used letters for Karen on the default/unshifted layer and the less common letters and loanword letters on the Shift layer.
If you have some particular suggestions about how to do that better (which specific characters to move onto which layer), please let us know.
Also, are you using it on a computer or a phone?
@kawkhu
What do you think about moving င to the Shift layer? It seems this is not a commonly used character in Sgaw Karen?
The Sgaw Karen keyboard version 1.0 is now live at https://keyman.com/keyboards/sil_sgaw_karen.
For online help, go to: https://help.keyman.com/keyboard/sil_sgaw_karen/1.0/sil_sgaw_karen.
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May I know which Sgaw Karen unicode keyboard layout is the main one as Myanmar unicode keyboard layout? Beause I saw so many different keyboard layout styles or key positions for Sgaw Karen keyboard unlike Myanmar unicode keyboard has the same styles or key positions and it is build in to windows 10. I am confuse with different Karen keyboard layout in Keymagic, Keyman, MUA and etc. Because I want all Sgaw Karen unicode keyboard to be uniform if possible.
Key position got from Myanmar Unicode webpage
Pyidaungsu font including Sgaw Karen font code got from Myanmar Unicode webpage
I do not know of any standard layout for Sgaw Karen for Unicode. This is, I believe, mostly because of the language community’s lack of using Unicode for writing their language. Legacy fonts are still very common.